Select Committee · Public Accounts Committee

NHS Correspondence handling inquiry

Status: Closed Opened: 21 Mar 2018 Closed: 21 Mar 2018 1 report

Inquiry scope

In October 2017, the Public Accounts Committee took evidence from NHS England about how clinical correspondence was managed at NHS Shared Business Services. During that evidence session, NHS England told the Committee that it had discovered a new backlog of 162,000 items of clinical correspondence. This correspondence had been reported to NHS England by their contractor Capita in May 2016 but NHS England did not ask Capita to return the correspondence to the GPs who had accidentally sent it to the wrong place. In September 2017, NHS England’s National Incident Team took over management of the problem and reviewed 374,000 pieces of correspondence, finding over 1800 that needed reviewing urgently. As of February 2018, no harm to patients had been identified.

Reports

1 report

43rd Report - Clinical correspondence handling in the NHS

HC No.: HC 929
Published: 6 Jun 2018
Items: 0
Response: No response document linked

Oral evidence sessions

1 session

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Date	Session and witnesses	Source
26 Mar 2018	No witnesses recorded	View ↗

Correspondence

2 letters

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Published	Direction	Letter
31 Jan 2019	To committee	Letter from Emily Lawson, National Director: Transformation and Corporate Operations at the NHS to Chair regarding Clinical correspondence handling in the NHS report - dated 28.01.19
4 Jun 2018	—	Correspondence from NHS England regarding clinical correspondence handling, 22 March 2018